A few months back, my resident Sales Warlord made a sales call to a business coach.
She proceeded to tell him that she wasn’t interested in anything we had to say, because she’d seen “Leela’s amateur videos” and felt she couldn’t learn anything from us.
I had a quick look at her website.
No videos.
No products.
No Opt In.
You know, there were a few technical and strategic things she could have learned from us that would have made her money.
But the most important thing she could have learned was most obvious in her attempt to be insulting towards me. Yep – I put all of my videos together myself … I painstakingly edit audio to fit video length, I scream and swear at the computer when it won’t do what I want it to (and then realise I’m hitting the wrong button again … whoops!). I take a lot of pride in my “amateur” videos.
But most importantly – my amateur videos beat your non-existent videos any day of the week.
It’s a favourite lesson from The Leela, I know – but it bears repeating … especially for you recovering perfectionists (and doubly especially for those who haven’t gotten as far as recovery yet!) - Just. Do. Stuff.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Watch my video above … there’s way too much text … and the font went a little shaky when converted to online …and there’s at least one spelling mistake …
Do I:
A) – pull said video and spend another 5 hours fixing it? Or
B) – leave it as is …
The answer is almost always B (unless you’ve done something really shockingly wrong that will either get you arrested or make people think worse of you than they already do … that second, for me, is rarely an issue … those who think badly of me couldn’t possibly think worse … ).
It’s Good Enough.
The ending is fucking AWESOME – if I do say so myself.
And besides … I don’t want to work with details focused people who get all hung up on one slightly mis-spelled word … and they don’t want to work with me because I get frustrated at them too easily … we’re better apart …
The people who love you will be incredibly forgiving of your “amateurishness”.
The haters will always find something to pull apart no matter how good a job you do …
So today – do something you’ve been putting off … something you’ve been perfectionising … just get it done, get it out there and breathe … and then tell us all about it …
(Oh and hey – if that IS you, you need to get involved in the Opposite Experiment … coming soon!).
I’ve been hanging around the back end of seminars for more than 5 years and in that time I’ve seen a lot of speakers come and go – yesterday’s flavour of the month becomes today’s invisible person. And don’t even get me started on how few women are normally up there – it becomes easy to think, after a while, that this is a game for men – because they seem to be the most successful and the ones who are around long term.